I don’t know what Magnus Bailey would say. There was a kind of poison in her tone although her eyes teared at the name.
Thomas DeGrace continued to pace. His arms slashed through the air in sharp, useless gestures.
I do. It would break his heart to see you like this. Why, he’d take you by the scruff and drag you home to lock you up.
Minerva Fishbein tossed her head. No, he wouldn’t. He was a coward. I know braver men now.
He clucked his tongue and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, wondering what to do. Her lips curled into a pout. She stepped up good and close to him. He went still.
You helped me out tonight, Thomas. Whoever won that fight would’ve cut me just for fun. There somethin’ I can do for you? She spoke in a dark, throaty purr, which frightened him more than a bucket of spiders. Then she draped her arms around his neck.
He broke away from her. She gave him a scornful grin, smoothed her skirt, squared her shoulders, and left him there, distraught, confused, and alone.
After that night, he’d run into her plying her trade from time to time, always in the early morning hours. He kept an eye on her, although they rarely spoke. Sometime during that summer, she disappeared as thoroughly as Magnus Bailey. When he asked around for L’il Red, as she’d come to be known, no one knew where she’d gone, though many murmured her name wistfully and wished her back home to Beale Street, where she belonged.
It was a good year before she turned up, heavier, harder, and full of new angles on the flesh game. She bought a house on South Third and dressed it up in velvet curtains and chandeliers, hired an eighty-eighter, two bartenders capable of keeping the peace, and half a dozen girls fresh from the backwater and full of juice. She taught them everything she knew about men. Folk said she had a silent partner, the moneyman, a handsome degenerate from an old Memphis family with too much time on his hands. L’il Red’s was a big success. Thomas DeGrace passed her establishment nearly every night on his way to his usual haunts. More than once, he considered stopping in just to see how she got on, but he didn’t.
There was a barbershop downtown that catered to coloreds, Uncle Pete’s, and this was a place where DeGrace took a shave and a shine whenever he was feeling flush. Since he was a good tipper, old Pete took messages for him on his telephone and allowed him to make calls for a small fee. After he’d run a particularly profitable craps game the night before, DeGrace went to Uncle Pete’s for the shave deluxe that came with a neck massage. Old Pete greeted him with uncommon urgency.
Thomas! Thomas! The barber was so excited to see him, he wrapped a steaming-hot towel around a customer’s face tighter than he should. The man squealed.
Sorry there, son, he apologized before addressing DeGrace again in a hurried, hot voice. Every day, twice a day for near a week, a man’s been callin’ here lookin’ for you, and I’m gettin’ so peeved I nearly sent my grandson out on the streets to find you. Thank Jesus’ sweet name I did not, as that boy is too young to see the joints you visit. It’s a thing neither one of us would want on our souls, exposing that dear child to the life you lead.
Given that a profitable craps game required its runner to drink more bourbon than each of its marks combined, DeGrace was assaulted by the man’s words in a way that made his head hurt. What followed made his head hurt more. He took the phone number from Pete and instructed the operator to dial it straightaway. While the phone rang, he held his breath until his lungs burned. After five rings, there was the clicking sound of a phone picked up but no voice acknowledging such. Hello, hello, hello? DeGrace spoke into his end until a voice responded that was so frail it made the very act of answering the phone seem herculean.
This is Thomas DeGrace, cousin of Magnus Bailey? it asked, as if it were impossible that any other person might chance to call.
Yes.
This is your old friend Fishbein, my dear. I have urgent needs of you.
While DeGrace raised his eyes to heaven and laid his aching head against the barbershop wall, Fishbein continued.
I needs you to bring Minerva to me. It’s taken so long to find you, it’s become a matter of life and death. I can tell you where she is living. Do you know this place? I am hoping not, but if you do, you will understand why I cannot see her there myself and live.
How could Thomas DeGrace refuse? Cursing his cousin for setting him up with the Fishbeins to begin with, he went directly to the house on South Third known as Li’l Red’s. It was two in the afternoon, the hour bordellos begin to come awake. Windows are opened to chase out the funk, floors are swept. Little dishes of vinegar under the beds are freshened to further sweeten the air. If it’s a Wednesday, the sheets are changed. Sleepy girls of no virtue at all stumble downstairs in kimonos and bare feet for their coffees and sugar treats, trading affection or insult, depending on what transpired between them the night before. A little later, bath water’s drawn, hair is coiffed. Yesterday’s makeup is at last washed off, the skin breathes awhile before new paints are applied. When Thomas arrived, he walked straight in through the front door. Five light-skinned colored women and one very black one lounged about the drawing room looking at beauty magazines, chiding one another for this and that. They stared at him with a bored, judgmental curiosity. The barkeep, occupied with taking inventory of a delivery of bootleg, did not look up from his chore.
Not open yet, bub, he said. But one of these li’l birds might be willin’ to sing you a song of glory. Up to them.
I’m here to see Minerva Fishbein, Thomas said. He tried not to look at the girls, who made a game of opening and closing their legs to plague him.
L’il Red don’t take no callers before five.
I’m not a caller. I got family business.
The barkeep shrugged. Lifted his chin and pointed it in the direction of the staircase.
First door on the left. If she answers it, she answers it. But don’t expect her to be in a good mood this time of day.
He ascended the stairs, hat in hand. He knocked on the first door on the left. A gruff feminine voice answered him.
Who dares?
Miss Minnie, it’s Thomas DeGrace, he said. I have news.
There was the rustling sound of a woman’s movement, then the rapid tap-tap of her light step rushing to the door. It swung open, and there she was, L’il Red, her hair longer now, reaching her shoulders in a cascade of curls as tight as any Negro gal’s and just as thick. In contrast to the sluggish disarray of her girls downstairs, she was alert, animated, dressed in a crisp navy blue dress that fell to the middle of her calves. It had a starched white collar and cuffs while a shock of white lace popped out from the bodice as sweetly as a flower marks the pure bosom of a virgin. She wore stockings of a modest hue and the thick, solid shoes of a grieving widow. She held a pen in one hand, and the fingers that held it were stained with ink.
Come in, come in, she said, and as he did, shut the door behind him. What is it you have to tell me?
Her brown eyes held a terrible intensity, which fixed itself on him, presenting a passionate challenge he did not comprehend. Then he saw the way her chest filled up with air and stopped, all life in her suspended, waiting for his response. Oh no, he thought, his mind sensitized under the fierce light of her expectation. She thinks I come from Magnus. His tongue grew thick in his mouth.
I will slap you if you don’t speak, Thomas.
He swallowed and words tumbled out.
Your daddy. A matter of life and death, he says. You must come right away.
She blinked twice, her lower lip quivered, and the air left her lungs in a short, defeated puff.
Alright, she said. She went to her desk, a large ornate piece accented by scrollwork and the claws of animals, its top covered in a sparkling sheet of glass. She put down her pen, closed her books. Take me there, she said. My driver is on an errand. Call us a cab.
Taking up the ph
one on her desk to do so, Thomas noticed how tidy everything was, not a paper, a clip without its place. As she went to the next room for her good cloth coat and a navy cloche, he looked around and saw that everything else in the room was sleek, structured for efficiency and order, that nothing there suggested the tangled clutter one might expect from the offices of the town’s most trafficked whorehouse. For reasons he could only guess, a chill went down his spine.
Thomas sat in the front of the cab next to the driver. There was no further conversation between them. When they arrived at Fishbein’s home, Minerva told both DeGrace and the driver to wait in the cab in case she had further need of them.
As soon as she’d entered the house, the driver said, L’il Red makin’ house calls these days? and started to chuckle at the idea, which, however absurd, was the only explanation he could think of for this strange trip from the town’s worst streets to its best.
Thomas DeGrace surprised himself by quitting the car and slamming the door in response. As he leaned against the car’s rear, waiting for Miss Minnie, he pondered the startling idea that he felt a loyalty to the old Jew and his slut of a daughter. For the second time that day, he found himself cursing his cousin.
An hour passed. When at last Minerva Fishbein reappeared, her father emerged from the house as well to bid her good-bye on the veranda. He looked smaller, frailer than the last time Thomas DeGrace had seen him, which was, he figured, maybe three years before. A good gust of wind would pick him up and land him in Alabam’, he thought.
Father and daughter embraced, the madam of South Third Street breaking from the man slowly, the way dancers do when the song has ended but for the last waning notes. Fishbein groaned and pulled her back, close to him, which astonished given his appearance. DeGrace would not have thought him capable of restraining a kitten, let alone that fearsome will known as L’il Red. The old man took her hands in his, raised them to his lips, and kissed them over and over. He begged her in a voice loud enough for Thomas and, indeed, the neighbors hiding behind their curtains to watch the scandalous spectacle of a pious father pleading with his infamous daughter, to hear.
Don’t go back to that life. You are home now. Stay with me. We can send Thomas DeGrace over that place to settle your interests. You stay here. Stay with me. I will heal you as in days of old.
Without a word, she shook him off and left Fishbein weeping, his arms outstretched in the direction of her back. Everyone who watched and listened, covertly or openly, considered her a heartless creature without conscience or mercy.
When she got to the car, Thomas DeGrace opened the passenger door. He saw her eyes were red. Her nose ran a little. She sat down and clasped her hands together to stop their shake. She cleared her throat to ask him where she could drop him off. He gave her an address at the edge of Orange Mound. When they got there, he left the car after refusing the bills she offered him for his services. As he did, she leaned forward in her seat to give the driver a new address.
Macklin Sanatorium, she said, Broadway Avenue, West Memphis.
This was such an unexpected destination, Thomas DeGrace started, unsure he heard correctly. He turned to look back into the car, where Minerva Fishbein stared at him again with that fiery challenge he could not bear. He looked away while the car took off in a cloud of gasoline exhaust mixed with the dust of the road.
BEFORE WE REACH THE HEAV’NLY FIELDS
Along the Mississippi,
Before and After the Flood, 1923–1932
IX
Magnus Bailey was on the run for years. He would not have described his movements in terms of flight, but that didn’t change a thing. He was running, alright. Away from Memphis, away from Fishbein, away from Tulips End, away from Minnie, away from danger, away from love. In his mind, he was running to something not away from it, a thought that allowed his tortured soul the balm of self-deception. If asked what it was he ran to, he’d have said freedom.
The first place he ran to was the great mother Mississippi, offering himself as a barge swab, which signified he wished to punish himself as well as hide. Within a few days, his city-boy hands were no longer smooth and soft but swollen, bloody, and, within a few weeks, hard, weathered. He looked down at them with some surprise, as if they belonged to someone else, and thought, These are not the kind of hands meant to touch the sweet skin of a lady. Then he shuddered because Minerva Fishbein was the first lady he imagined them on. The mind of man is a sewer, he told the swab next to him, who raised his wooly head to give Bailey a gap-toothed grin.
Do tell, the man said, leaning on a barge pole, ready for a story that might titillate or amuse and so break the wretched, sodden burden of every day on that deck, on that river under the eye and stanchion of a drunken pilot with a mean streak.
Magnus Bailey muttered and dropped his gaze, angry with himself for speaking out loud. Minnie lived in a private place in him, buried deep from the ken of others, buried so deep she only appeared to him unbidden in fantasies and dreams.
Most times, it plain hurt to think of her, which is why he pushed his thoughts away as soon as they surfaced. In his dreams, she would emerge from the river, dressed in dripping white. She hung on a cross, a crown of wilted lilies on her head, her hair twisting down to her waist in ropes of wet curls like so many crimson snakes. In such dreams, he would sometimes weep in awe of the miracle that she had sacrificed herself for his sins. Other times, they released within him a bottled rage that she had done so, and he scourged her with stalks of river grass plaited with thorns. He’d awake heartsore and haunted for days and drank to keep from dreaming. On rare occasions, he had a pleasant dream of her. In these, she was kept safe behind her father’s walls and was no longer troubled by men. The pleasant dreams disturbed him most.
Bailey’s barge went as far south as Vicksburg, Mississippi, and as far north as St. Louis, Missouri. Whenever they stopped in Memphis, the others would leave and head over to Beale Street for high times. Magnus had not the habit, preferring to hide out between boxes and bales on deck rather than risk recognition by someone from the old days. Not that he stood much of a chance of being discovered. He’d gained weight and grown a beard. He sported a scar or two from dustups he drank himself into in other towns. His eyes, once so bright and quick, had dulled. Deep, puffy bags sprang up beneath them. He still had the gold tooth but lost the tooth next to it. He might’ve heard of L’il Red’s from the men returning to the barge after their adventures, but he never visited there and had no knowledge of how far his Minnie had fallen.
Magnus Bailey’s childhood had been filled with lust for treasure and glory, courtesy of his mama’s gift for storytelling. Sitting cross-legged with him on the dirt floor of their cabin, she told him of African princes directly in his bloodline, men of great wisdom and bravery, men with a dozen wives and a hundred children, all dressed in garments with threads of gold. She told him of slaves who rose up and killed their masters then escaped across the sea to live lives of luxury in the courts of kings. She told him fables of creatures of the woods who were clever and resourceful, cheating man of their hides to wear and their flesh to eat. For young Magnus every one of these tales was instruction in a life worth living. He resolved to become elegant, suave, cunning, a master of romance. His first education in the manners of swells he accomplished at eight years old as a bootblack on a Memphis street, at a corner near the wharf where the pleasure boats docked, where gamblers, hucksters, and ladies’ men—rich boys on a tear—came to rid themselves of Mississippi mud before strutting their stuff down the boardwalk for all the world to admire. Quick-witted, a fast learner, Magnus mastered their speech and style by the time he was twelve. He moved up in the world, became a runner on the boats themselves, pocketing enough money in tips to gild both his life and his mama’s, too. From there on in, it was just a matter of time before he became the well-heeled fancy man Fishbein and his daughter encountered on the docks of East St. Louis. It was a life tha
t suited his nature, made the best use of his talents, none of which were engaged in his years on the run. At first he’d had to restrain himself from sweet-talking the pilot into advantage or acquiring extra cash from his mates through subterfuge. Then he got used to sweat, dirt, and deprivation. Reflecting on the ruination he’d caused Minerva Fishbein, he figured he deserved them.
He might have lived against his nature for the rest of his days were it not for the Great Flood of ’27. He’d seen rough seasons on the river before that terrible year. High water, crops ruined, winds that blew a man clear off deck, fogs thick enough to chew, none of these were unknown to him. But from the fall of ’26, it was obvious to every old hand that the Mississippi was getting ready to pitch one of her fits. While it was still winter, the rains stopped briefly, engendering hope in the naïve and foolish that the river might recede some before the spring melt brought more water downstream. The high-water marks of earlier floods had not yet been surpassed. Before long, the rains began again, and the cargo on Bailey’s barge changed. Loads of winter crops, ginned cotton, farm equipment, and milled lumber gave way to stockpiles of sandbags, boxes of canned goods and medical supplies, then government engineers with the tools of their trade wrapped tight and stored under the rifles of guardsmen. Just before Magnus Bailey realized he liked life enough to save himself, they took on refugees from the Yazoo and Ohio Rivers, where the water was highest—whole families and all the possessions they could carry, looking for the best place to get close to high land. That alone was the dream of desperate men.
The Delta ain’t never been nothin’ but flat as a pancake, the pilot reminded Bailey of a Saturday night. These fools think I got someplace to land ’em where they can walk half a day and scamper up some hill, but all I got is a place to store their money until they get tired of our Lady here and beg to put their feet on dirt.
Marching to Zion Page 11
